Limo Operator Indicted on Felony Counts in Deadly Crash

The operator of a company whose stretch limousine was involved in a deadly crash in New York state that killed 20 people last year was indicted in April on dozens of felony counts. Nauman Hussain, who ran the Prestige Limousine company with his father, was charged with 20 counts of manslaughter in the second degree for each victim; 19 more counts of criminally negligent homicide were added to a single count he was already facing.

The grand jury handed up the indictment after deliberating all day in the Schoharie County Court’s basement, six months after Hussain, 29, was first charged in the investigation’s early stages. Hussain’s defense attorney, Lee Kindlon, said his client was “not guilty of criminal wrongdoing” and called the indictment “flawed.”

Hussain pled not guilty at his April arraignment.

Prestige Limousine rented out the 2001 Ford Excursion limo on Oct. 6, 2018, to a group of 17 friends who were planning to celebrate a birthday at a brewery in Cooperstown. The limo blew through a stop sign and crashed into a parked vehicle and two people at a county store. The two bystanders along with everyone in the limo were killed.

The limousine driver, 53-year-old upstate New Yorker Scott Lisinicchia, didn’t have an appropriate license to operate the vehicle, which failed a state inspection just weeks before the deadly crash. It was the nation’s deadliest transportation accident in nearly a decade.